Keith Miller

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Keith Miller
Australia
Personal information
Full name	Keith Ross Miller
Nickname	Nugget
Born	28 November 1919 (1919-11-28)
	Sunshine, Victoria, Australia
Died	11 October 2004 (aged 84)
	Mornington, Victoria, Australia
Height	1.88 m (6 ft 2 in)
Role	All-rounder
Batting style	Right-hand batsman
Bowling style	Right-arm fast
International information
Test debut (cap 168)	29 March 1946: v New Zealand
Last Test	11 October 1956: v Pakistan
Domestic team information
Years	Team
1959	Nottinghamshire
1959	MCC
1947/48–1955/56	New South Wales
1937/38–1946/47	Victoria
Career statistics
	Tests	First-class
Matches	55	226
Runs scored	2958	14183
Batting average	36.97	48.90
100s/50s	7/13	41/63
Top score	147	281*
Balls bowled	10461	28377
Wickets	170	497
Bowling average	22.97	22.30
5 wickets in innings	7	16
10 wickets in match	1	1
Best bowling	7/60	7/12
Catches/stumpings	38/–	136/–
As of 19 December 2007 Source: CricketArchive

Keith Ross Miller MBE (28 November 1919 - 11 October 2004) was a famous Australian Test cricketer and a Second World War pilot. Miller is widely regarded as Australia's greatest ever all-rounder.^[1] Because of his ability, irreverent manner and good looks he was a crowd favourite.^[2] An English journalist called Miller "the golden boy" of cricket, leading to him being nicknamed "Nugget".^[3] He "was more than a cricketer: ...he embodied the idea that there was more to life than cricket".^[4]

By the time of his retirement from Test cricket in 1956, Miller had the best statistics of any all-rounder in cricket history.^[1] He often batted high in the order, sometimes as high as number three. He was a powerful striker of the ball, and one straight six that he hit at the Sydney Cricket Ground was still rising when it hit the first deck of the M.A. Noble Stand.^{[citation needed]} When bowling, Miller was famous for varying his run-up, would often bowl his fastest deliveries from a short run and frequently bowled much slower balls, to surprise batsmen.^{[citation needed]} He averaged just over three wickets per game, because he was used sparingly in his later career, due to a wartime injury.^{[citation needed]} He was also a fine fielder and an especially acrobatic catcher in the slips.^[5]

Miller was also a successful Australian rules footballer, and played for St Kilda and the Victorian state team.^[6] He played 50 games for the Saints, and occasionally played in the forward line, where he kicked eight goals in one game, during 1941.^{[citation needed]}

Neville Cardus referred to Miller as "the Australian in excelsis"; Daily Mail sportswriter Ian Wooldridge's response was "By God he was right".^[4] This status was reflected when Miller was made one of the ten inaugural members of the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame.^[6]

[edit] Early life

Born in the western Melbourne suburb of Sunshine, Miller was the youngest of Leslie and Edith Miller’s four children. He was named after the Australian pioneer aviators Ross and Keith Smith, who were in the midst of their historic flight from England to Australia at the time Miller was born.^[5] Miller began his schooling in Sunshine before his family moved to the inner-Melbourne suburb of Elsternwick. He went to the local state school before transferring to Melbourne High School where the Australian Test captain Bill Woodfull was on the teaching staff.^[7]

A small child, Miller’s major sporting aspiration was to be a jockey; he also played cricket and Australian rules football.^[2] At the age of 12, he played for a Victorian schoolboys cricket team captained by Merv Harvey, which played in Queensland. Joining the local sub-district cricket club Elsternwick in his mid teens, he was dropped after one match for his poor fielding. He then tried out with St Kilda, which could not find a place for him in any of its five teams.^[7] Nevertheless, the former Victorian player Hughie Carroll spotted Miller’s talent and lured him to the rival South Melbourne club. The prevailing zoning rules required South Melbourne to play him in their First XI or St Kilda could reclaim him, so he made his district cricket debut for South, aged 15. At this stage, he was just 162 cm tall — the Test batsman Keith Rigg recalls his first encounter with Miller in a district match:

He was so small he came in to bat with pads flapping around up near his waist. Hans Ebeling was bowling and Keith hit him through the covers for four. I thought, ‘Crikey, who’s this kid?’ ^[7]

Between seasons, Miller underwent a sudden growth spurt; on his return to South Melbourne he was unrecognisable to his club teammate Lindsay Hassett. Miller eventually reached 188 cm in height, thwarting his ambition to be a jockey although he never lost his love for the racetrack.^[7] This increase in size enabled Miller to generate greater power in his strokes when batting. In a match against Carlton, captained by his schoolmaster Woodfull, Miller scored 61. This prompted Woodfull to give him a silver eggcup as a memento, one of the few trophies from his sporting career that he kept in later life.^[8]

Miller spent the 1937–38 season with the VCA Colts and won the team’s batting trophy.^[7] Late in the summer, he made his first-class debut as an 18-year-old and hit 181 against Tasmania at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.^[9] In 1938–39, he rejoined South Melbourne and played four first-class matches for Victoria, scoring 125 runs at an average of 25. During the next two seasons, his nine first-class appearances were unremarkable; he scored only one further century.^[10] He achieved more success as a footballer after following his brothers Les and Ray in joining the Brighton Football Club in the VFA.^[7] In a match against Coburg, he played an outstanding defensive game on the greatest forward of the era, Bob Pratt. This led to his signing by St Kilda in the VFL, the game’s premier competition. Miller debuted for the Saints in 1940, playing at full back.^[11] Switched to the forward line the following year, he booted 28 goals in 16 games ^[12] and then played a handful of matches in the 1942 season before he began his active war service.

[edit] War service

As was the case with many of his contemporaries, Miller's sporting career was interrupted by the Second World War. On 20 August 1940, almost a year after war broke out, Miller joined the Militia (army reserve), and was assigned to the 4th Reserve Motor Transport Company.^[13] During the same period, he worked in the spare parts section of a motor dealer, then as a customs and shipping agent, and later with the Vacuum Oil Company.^[14] He left the Militia on November 8, 1941.^[13] Miller and a friend then attempted to join the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). When the navy would not take his friend, Miller left the recruiting office, walked around the corner to the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) recruiting office.^[14] On January 30, 1942 he was called to active service by the RAAF.^[15] He trained at flying schools at Cunderdin, Western Australia and Mallala, South Australia, and was posted to Europe in January 1943.

He served primarily with No. 169 Squadron RAF, in the UK, as a pilot of Mosquito fighter-bombers. Miller had several narrow escapes, and injured his back when making a belly landing, after one of his plane's engines failed, an injury that was to impact on his cricket, and particularly his bowling during his subsequent cricket career.^[2] When asked in an interview many years later by Michael Parkinson, about pressure on the cricket field, Miller famously responded, "Pressure is a Messerschmitt up your arse; playing cricket is not".^[16]

One of Miller's closest friends was an English cricket star, Denis Compton.^{[citation needed]} They first met in India during the war, in a match at Calcutta between an Australian armed forces team and East Zone. During East Zone's second innings, play was interrupted by rioting, including a pitch invasion, with Compton's score on 94. One of the rioters ran up to him and said: "Mr Compton, you very good player, but the match must stop now".^[17] In later years, Miller would quote this remark whenever Compton came to the crease in matches featuring both of them. In 2005, the ECB and Cricket Australia decided that the player adjudged the Player of the Series in the Ashes would be awarded the Compton-Miller Medal, recognising their friendship and rivalry.^[18]

Compton (l) and Miller (r)

[edit] Post-war sporting career

Miller plays an on drive for Victoria

After the war ended, Miller resumed playing cricket in the Victory Tests, in England, during 1945.

Miller returned to Australia in late 1945 after almost six months of continuous cricket for the Australian Services team in England and then the Indian subcontinent. Upon returning to Australia, Hassett’s men were informed by the military and the Australian Board of Control that the Services were to play a further six first-class matches against the state teams. Miller was tired but the fixtures were meant to revive cricket following the war and were also used as a lead-up to the international tour to New Zealand in March 1946.^[19]

Miler started his campaign for Test selection when the servicemen arrived in Perth and played their first match against Western Australia. Miller put in his best batting performance of the season with an 80 in a drawn match, before being rested in the match against South Australia.^[19] Miller finally returned to his home town on January 2, 1946 and was reunited with family and friends before taking on Victoria.^[20] Miller top-scored in both innings with 37 and 59 as the military men fell to an innings defeat.^[21] Miller and the servicemen had another difficult time against New South Wales, as they made 7/551 and Miller went wicketless.^[21] Miller faced his biggest challenge in Australian conditions in his quest for Test selection when he went out to bat. The Australian selectors had not been in England for the Victory Tests to witness his ability and Miller had not played to his potential on Australian soil.^{[citation needed]}

He was pitted against Bill O’Reilly, the leg spinner regarded as the best bowler in the world,^{[citation needed]} and Ray Lindwall, an emerging bowler of express pace, the fastest in Australia.^[22] Miller was on 74 as Services limped to 9/171. With only one partner left, Miller attacked and scored 31 of the last 33 runs, ending with an unbeaten 105, and earning plaudits among cricket pundits on Australian soil.^[22] Former leading Test batsman Alan Kippax opined that "Australia has unearthed a new champion",^[23] claiming that he was finer than Jack Gregory and saying that "few batsmen I have watched have had his ability to blend beauty and power".^[23] O’Reilly said that Miller’s century was "one of the best hundreds ever got against me".^[23] Miller compiled 46 in the second innings before being bowled by O’Reilly as the Servicemen fell to another innings defeat. Miller finished the AIF season with 4/49 in a drawn match against Queensland and a pair of fifties against Tasmania.^[23]

At the end of the season, Miller was selected for the New Zealand tour, under the captaincy of Queensland’s Bill Brown.^[24] Miller started the tour well, top-scoring with 139 against Auckland.^[25] Along with seven other debutants,^{[citation needed]} Miller made his Test debut in the match against New Zealand at the Basin Reserve in Wellington, a match that was retrospectively accorded Test status in 1948.^[26] On a sticky wicket, New Zealand won the toss and batted. Miller was not required to bowl in the first innings as O’Reilly and the medium-pace of Ernie Toshack skittled the home side for 42.^[26] Australia made 8/199 with Miller scoring 30. He was allowed to take the new ball in the second innings with Lindwall,^[27] starting a new ball partnership that was regarded as one of the finest of all time.^{[citation needed]} Miller took 2/6 in six overs before a flare-up of his back injury forced him to be removed from the attack. Australia bowled their hosts out for 54, securing an innings victory.^[28]

Miller, in the vertically-striped jumper, playing for St Kilda

Miller returned from New Zealand to play in what turned out to be his last season in the VFL, in 1946. He was immediately recalled to the first team.^[29] Miller played with more aggression than his pre-war years, as the pains of contact sport had now become trivial to what he experienced in the war years. Miller performed prominently for St Kilda, who came second last; his high leaping marks were a noted feature of a season that saw him chosen for the Victorian team to play South Australia. Miller became one of the few players to play at the highest levels of both cricket and Australian rules football.^[30]

Miller sporting a cut nose during a football match

Miller was discharged from the RAAF on June 26, 1946,^[30] and returned to his job at Vacuum Oil, something which he resented. Miller was upset that many of his colleagues had avoided the hazards of war and moved steadily up the ladder and regarded his job as demeaning, having spent a year being paid to play cricket for the military.^[31] Under such circumstances, Miller contemplated quitting Australian cricket and accepting a contract from Rawtenstall in the Lancashire League, valued at £1,000 per year for three seasons. With advertising and commercial commitments, this could triple his annual income to £3,000 per year, approximately ten times more lucrative than his income playing in Australia.^[31] Many of his colleagues in the Services team had likewise abandoned Australia and returned to the scene of their triumphs in 1945, where greater financial stability beckoned.^[24] On the flipside, Miller was worried that his impulsive nature and style in which he played could be curtailed by the pressures of professional performance. Miller was almost 27 and knew that the contract would see him in England until he was 30, effectively ending his career for Australia. Furthermore, it would have prevented him from playing Australian football during the winter.^[32] Despite this, Miller was feeling glum about his job in Melbourne, and signed the contract that tied him to Rawtenstall starting in April 1947.^[33]

Miller and his family

In the meantime, Miller had the upcoming Test series against England in 1946–47 to look forward to. He also approached his employers for two months leave without pay so that he could travel to the United States to get married to his long-time girlfriend. They refused, saying that he had been away during the war. Miller decided that he had enough money to live until he went to England in the autumn, so he resigned his job in August.^[33] Miller left Australia at the end of the football season in late August, amid press speculation that he might not return.^[34] Miller was reunited in Boston with Peg after more than three years of separation and they married in Massachusetts on September 21, 1946, with Miller wearing his RAAF uniform. Miller and his new bride returned to Australia in October. In the meantime, his contract with Rawtenstall became public news and he was threatened with his Test career being terminated. The Board of Control’s policy stipulated that any player that signed with a professional league in England could not represent Australia.^[35]

Miller and Morris walk out to bat for New South Wales

Miller had only been back in the country a week when he faced Wally Hammond’s touring Englishmen in a tour match for Victoria. His fielding and batting were rusty after the long layoff and the media constantly probed him as to whether he was going to fulfil his contract with Rawtenstall. Miller said nothing in public, but the Victorian Cricket Association made public appeals for someone to give Miller a job so that he would not leave Victoria and become a professional in England.^[36] Miller was selected for an Australian XI fixture against the tourists prior to the Test series, but made only 5 and bowled only four overs.^[36] In a Shield match in front of Bradman at the Adelaide Oval, Miller struck 188, with a wide array of strokes, leading the Adelaide Advertiser to describe it as "dashing and colourful".^[37] He went on to take 2/32 with the ball and was back in form. Bradman saw Miller as a top-order batsman and as his new ball partner for Lindwall, although Miller was a reluctant bowler. Bradman felt that Miller was crucial to his strategy of attacking England’s strong batting line-up and the likes of Hammond, Compton, Hutton, Edrich and Washbrook with high pace.^[38]

Miller made his Ashes debut the day after his 29th birthday in the First Test in Brisbane. Miller was slated to bat at No. 5 and Bradman fielded six front-line bowlers, with Miller, Lindwall, Colin McCool and Ian Johnson all scoring centuries at first class-level^{[citation needed][39]} Australia batted first but Miller was not needed until day two, coming in after Bradman was dismissed for 187 with the score at 3/322. Miller was asleep when the wicket fell, but played aggressively to reach his fifty in just 80 minutes before lunch. He struck one onto the roof of the members' stand at long-on, the biggest hit at the ground at the time. However after the lunch break, Miller slowed down and was trapped leg before wicket by Doug Wright, ending his first Test innings at 79.^[40] Australia reached 645 on the third day before a tropical storm hit. Miller was given the new ball along with Lindwall and he took his first Ashes wicket, bowling Hutton as England closed at 1/21.

The following day, the pitch had dried out under the sun and turned into a sticky pitch. Miller bowled at medium pace with off breaks and mixed in a large amount of bouncers, leading Jack Fingleton to compare the amount of high-paced short-pitched bowling by the Australian pair to that during Bodyline.^[41] On the uneven surface, Edrich was struck around 40 times on the body. Miller cut down the English top order, removing Edrich, Washbrook, Compton and Jack Ikin on the fourth morning to leave England at 5/56. Miller went on to finish at 7/60 as England made 141 and were forced to follow on. Miller removed Hutton again, this time in the first ball of the innings. Another rain-affected pitch saw England reduced to defeat by an innings and 334 runs. Miller ending with match figures of 9/77.^[42][43] His highly productive Ashes debut led to further speculation as to whether he was willing to end his Test career to turn professional. Miller continued to not answer Rawtenstall’s requests for confirmation and refused to comment to the media, hoping that he would get a better job offer in Australia.^[42] Miller continued to the Second Test in Sydney, where he had a quiet match, scoring 40 and taking one wicket on a spin-friendly pitch as Australia took another innings victory.^[43][44]

The 1948 "Invincibles" en route to England. Miller is the partially-obscured figure, standing with his hands on the shoulders of the man in front (Lindsay Hassett).

Miller saved his best batting for the Shield clash with arch-rivals New South Wales after the Second Test. He hammered three sixes from one over against Test team-mate Toshack and made 153 in a 271 run partnership with Merv Harvey in just over three hours, setting up an innings victory. Miller’s childhood hero Bill Ponsford said that it was the hardest hitting he had ever seen.^[45] The Third Test was Miller’s first in front of his home town. He had a mediocre game in a drawn match, scoring 33 and 34, and taking two wickets.^[46] Miller’s uncertain future continued to dog him, with Rawtenstall expressing their displeasure at Miller’s apparent recanting of his contract. Miller had privately decided that he would not go through with the deal, but was refusing to inform the Lancastrian club. In the meantime, he had various job offers, which he spurned until he received an offer from the manager of North Sydney, offering to help him relocate to Sydney to work as a liquor salesman, with time off for sport.^[47] Miller was back in a good frame of mind for the Fourth Test in Adelaide. In a high-scoring match, Miller took a wicket in each innings,^[43] but he shone with the bat. After England had made 460, Miller came in at 3/207 late on the second day.

On the first ball of the third morning, he hooked the ball into the crowd, landing just in front of the Governor’s VIP box to move to 39. He quickly accumulated another 61 runs in 71 minutes to reach his maiden Test century. Miller did not open up after reaching triple figures, as wickets fell around him and the Englishmen utilised leg theory to prevent scoring. As the tail fell apart, Miller accelerated again, launching drives into the crowd as England stationed four men on the fence waiting in vain to catch one of his drives. Miller ended unbeaten on 141 as Australia took a first innings lead but the match petered into a high-scoring draw.^[48] Before the last Test, Miller played for Victoria against England in what was to be his final match for his home state before moving to New South Wales. He took 4/65, his best bowling since the First Test.^[49]

The Fifth Test saw Miller take a wicket in either innings, leaving Australia with a target 214 runs on a wearing wicket. McCool joined Miller after the loss of 3/21 in quick succession with Australia at 5/180.^[50] Wright then beat Miller with three consecutive leg breaks, before he struck back against Alec Bedser with consecutive boundaries and together with McCool saw Australia to the target.^[51] Australia had taken the series 3–0, with Miller scoring 384 runs at 76.80 and took 16 wickets at 20.88, which placed him second in both batting and bowling to Bradman and Lindwall respectively.^[51] Nevertheless, Miller did not enjoy himself as much as during the Victory Tests and became disillusioned with Bradman’s strategic mentality. Miller was impulsive and cared little for records or ruthlessly dominating his opponents; he loved to play in a flamboyant manner with early declarations to keep the match alive and less concern for winning or losing. Hassett had outlined in 1945 that the post-war era should be about "cricket, not war".^[52]

However, Test cricket had always been fought fiercely, and the ruthless Bradman was not about to change this. Bradman repeatedly shut England out of the game with massive totals, relentless snuffing out any prospects of an English win rather than maximising the chances of an Australian victory with enterprising declarations.^[44] For the 1946-47 season, Miller transferred to the New South Wales (NSW) team and played the remainder of his Sheffield Shield career with it. He was a key member of Donald Bradman's famous Invincibles touring party, which was undefeated on its tour of England in 1948.

Miller played 55 Test matches for Australia, retiring after the tour of England, Pakistan and India in 1956. He retired from NSW after the 1958-59 season.

Keith Miller

[edit] Later life

After retirement, Miller "remained in the public eye...", not least for "unsubstantiated rumours of an affair with Princess Margaret".^[4] He made a living as a journalist and columnist, employed by the Daily Express as a "special cricket writer" for twenty years. He later worked for Vernons Pools, owned by the millionaire racing identity, Robert Sangster.^[53] However, Miller "was happiest at the cricket or at the races".^[4]

Miller's later life was plagued by ill health; "Life exacted its tolls; he suffered cancer, had a hip replaced, part of an ear removed and at length was wheelchair-bound".^[2] He accepted these vicissitudes equably; "Some grieved to see him reduced, but not him; these were life's deliveries. He knew only that one would get him out eventually. Asked at 75 about death, he said: "Never think about it. No regrets. I've had a hell of a good life. Been damned lucky".^[2]

Keith Miller died in October 2004 after being in poor health for some time.^[4]

[edit] Playing style

Miller playing a cut shot

Miller combined classy strokeplay with big hitting, his front foot play especially devastating. He had a rifle like straight drive, played pull and sweep shots with a minimum of effort and was able to cut elegantly. He combined this elegance with unorthodoxy, hitting two sixes over square leg with a backhand tennis shot and once beginning the day's play in a Test match with a six.^[5] Len Hutton said he was "the most unpredictable cricketer I have played against".^[2]

As a bowler, Miller had a classically high arm action, moving the ball sharply either way and able to make the ball rise from a good length. He was often able to generate more pace than his new ball partner, Lindwall. He was always willing to try something new if the batsman were set, varying his approach from fifteen paces to five and vice-versa. A round arm delivery often managed to capture a wicket, surprising the batsman.^[5] His use of bouncers at Trent Bridge during the 1948 tour was seen by the English crowd as excessive, who booed him. Miller simply sat down until the barracking had subsided. He was often required to bowl through pain, pressing a disk into place at the base of his spine before sending down the next delivery.^[4]

He was an acrobatic slips fielder, who would take freakish catches with nonchalant ease, often immediately returning to his discussion with those around him as if nothing was unusual.^[5] Miller often required a contest to retain interest in the game. At Southend in 1948, as the Australians scored a record 721 runs in a single day against Essex, Miller, coming in to bat when the score was 2/364, allowed himself to be bowled first ball.^[4] Indeed, he "turned to the wicketkeeper and said: "Thank God that's over"."^[2] He never captained Australia, as his attitude to the game tended to alarm the authorities. About Miller, Ashley Mallett wrote, "He loved tradition, but hated convention. His unstructured way of playing and living would be anathema to cricketers now... He played as he fought the war, by impulse and mood.^[2]

[edit] Personality

A larger than life character, Miller was the subject of many stories, often apocryphal. One story had Don Bradman answering a knock on the door late one night to see Miller dressed in a dinner suit. Miller advised Bradman that, as demanded, he was in bed at curfew and was now going out.^[2] His relationship with Bradman was one riddled with friction and mutual antipathy, "... one a roundhead of massive influence, the other a cavalier and maverick". As Bradman moved from batting hero and team captain to selector and administrator, his influence grew; this "... almost certainly cost Miller any chance of captaining his country".^[53]

He sometimes set his field by saying to his players: "scatter".^{[citation needed]} On another occasion, he is reported to have said, after being told that NSW was taking the field with one player too many: "I say, will one of you chaps piss off?".^{[citation needed]}

One night, following a duel with Messerschmitts in his Mosquito, he made an unauthorised detour over Bonn because it was Beethoven's birthplace and he was a lover of the classics.^[2] Despite his fame, Miller remained a humble man; when asked his favourite cricketing memory, he would recall no incident concerning himself, but "a South Australian team-mate walking onto Lord's to a thunderous ovation a few weeks after his release from a POW camp".^[2] The cricket broadcaster, John Arlott said "that for all the glamour that attached to Miller, he was staunch and unaffected as a friend".^[2]

When asked how he managed to take seven wickets for just 12 runs against South Australia, Miller replied,

[edit] Legacy and statistical analysis

Keith Miller's Test career batting performances

Miller's achievements were recognised by a host of awards during his lifetime and posthumously. One of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 1954,^[55] Miller was also one of the ten inaugural inductees into the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame in 1996.^[6]

He is also one of only four Australian cricketers, (the others being Bradman, Victor Trumper and Shane Warne) to be honoured with a portrait in the Long Room at Lord's in London.^[56][53][57]

In 1956, as a result of injuries sustained by team-mates, Miller, aged 36, was forced to shoulder the burden of the bowling in the Lord's Test. He bowled more than 70 overs in the match, taking five wickets in each innings. Miller had scored 109 in the 1953 Lord's Test, and remains the only man to have his name on both the batting and bowling honours boards in the visitors' dressing-room there.^[4]

Miller's abilities as an all-rounder led to enormous success as both batsman and bowler. The ICC player rankings have been applied retrospectively to cricket history and Miller achieved top ten rankings with both bat and ball. As a batsman, he peaked at ninth in the world in 1952, and was a top 20 player from shortly after début and for the rest of the duration of his career.^[58] Miller's bowling abilities led to even greater success. By the end of 1946, he was already ranked sixth in the world and thereafter never slipped lower than ninth; for much of his career, he was the second best bowler in the world according to the ratings, remarkably, for a 36-year-old, peaking at the number 1 slot for a few months in 1956.^[59] As an all-rounder, therefore, it is unsurprising to find that he was peerless for most of his career, ranked as number 1 in the world for most of his career, including an unbroken eight year run from June 1948 until his retirement.^[60]

Miller's statistics are an inexact measure of his worth to the side. Many of the Australia teams he played in featured very strong batting line-ups, restricting his opportunities as a middle-order player.^{[citation needed]} His verve and enthusiasm were also important contributors to Australian success, as was his ability to produce the unexpected (particularly with the ball) and help break partnerships.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Footnotes and citations

[edit] External links

• Cricinfo, 2007, "Keith Miller" (player profile)
• AFL Statistics: Keith Miller
• Brydon Coverdale, "Australia's Winter Allrounders: XI Test Cricketers who played Australian Rules football at the highest level", Cricinfo, 28 May 2007
• Craig Baum, "Death of a hero" (Sydney Morning Herald, October 11, 2004)
• Australian War Memorial (no date), "Keith Nugget Miller"
• ABC Radio National (transcript) "The gods created Keith Miller...then threw the mould away." (The Sports Factor, October 15, 2004)

v • d • e Australia squad - "The Invincibles" 1 Sid Barnes • 2 Don Bradman (c) • 3 Bill Brown • 4 Ron Hamence • 5 Neil Harvey • 6 Lindsay Hassett (vc) • 7 Ian Johnson  • 8 Bill Johnston • 9 Ray Lindwall • 10 Sam Loxton • 11 Colin McCool • 12 Keith Miller • 13 Arthur Morris  • 14 Doug Ring • 15 Ron Saggers (wk) • 16 Don Tallon (wk) • 17 Ernie Toshack • Coach: Keith Johnson

v • d • e Australia squad - Australian Cricket Board Team of the Century 1 Bill Ponsford • 2 Arthur Morris • 3 Don Bradman (c) • 4 Greg Chappell • 5 Neil Harvey • 6 Keith Miller (vc)  • 7 Ian Healy (wk) • 8 Ray Lindwall • 9 Shane Warne • 10 Dennis Lillee • 11 Bill O'Reilly • 12 Allan Border (12th)